CONCERTS FROM THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 2020-2021 The McKim Fund in the Library of Congress ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE Friday, November 13, 2020 ~ 8:00 pm The Library of Congress Virtual Event The MCKIM FUND in the Library of Congress was created in 1970 through a bequest of Mrs. W. Duncan McKim, concert violinist, who won international prominence under her maiden name, Leonora Jackson; the fund supports the commissioning and performance of chamber music for violin and piano. Conversations with the Artists Join us online at loc.gov/concerts/ensemble-dal-niente for a conversation with musicians from Ensemble Dal Niente, brief interviews with all composers on the program, and a conversation with composer Igor Santos about his new Library commission, available starting at 10am on Friday, November 13. Facebook Post-concert Chat Want more? Join other concert goers and Music Division curators after the concert for a chat that may include the artists, depending on availability. You can access this during the premiere and for a few minutes after by going to facebook.com/pg/libraryofcongressperformingarts/videos Ensemble Dal Niente wishes to acknowledge the support of the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation Illinois Arts Council Association With special thanks to Ben Bolter; Dan Nichols, Mark Alletag and Qi Yun of Aphorism Studios; Mike Sportiello, Heidi Hewitt and the DePaul School of Music; Zach Good; Amanda Franck; Chris Anderson and Fulton Street Collective; Gretchen and Skip McCann How to Watch Concerts from the Library of Congress Virtual Events 1) See each individual event page at loc.gov/concerts 2) Watch on the Library's YouTube channel: youtube.com/loc 3) Watch the premiere of the concert on Facebook: facebook.com/libraryofcongressperformingarts/videos Videos may not be available on all three platforms, and some videos will only be accessible for a limited period of time. The Library of Congress Virtual Event Friday, November 13, 2020 — 8:00 pm The McKim Fund in the Library of Congress ENSEMBLE DAL NIENTE Carrie Henneman Shaw, Soprano Ben Melsky, Harp Winston Choi, Piano MingHuan Xu, Violin Michael Lewanski, Conductor • 1 Musicians Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano Andrew Nogal, oboe Emma Hospelhorn, flute Zachary Good, clarinet Katie Schoepflin Jimoh, clarinet Ben Roidl-Ward, bassoon Matthew Oliphant, horn Jesse Langen, guitar Ben Melsky, harp Kyle Flens, percussion Colin McCall, percussion Winston Choi, piano MingHuan Xu, violin Tara Lynn Ramsey, violin Caitlin Edwards, violin Ammie Brod, viola Juan JosÉ Horie Phoebus, cello Edward Kass, double bass Michael Lewanski, conductor • Video Production Dan Nichols And Mark Alletag, Aphorism Studios Igor Santos 2 Program Igor Santos confined. speak. (2020) Commissioned by the McKim Fund in the Library of Congress MingHuan Xu, violin and Winston Choi, piano World Premiere Tania LeÓn De Memorias (2000) Nur Slim Humming Between Branches (2017) I. Lonicera II. Caprifolium Matthew Oliphant, horn III. Trick or Truck Ben Roidl Ward, bassoon IV. Phlehemos Deen V. Lumpi - Colum VI. Stoplight Ammie Brod, viola VII. Perennifolia VIII. Letter for B. IX. Hummm Nine Andrew Nogal, oboe Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano Luis Amaya Tinta Roja, Tinta Negra (2017) TomÁs Gueglio Lamarque Songs (2020) World Premiere Hilda Paredes Demente Cuerda (2004) Ben Melsky, harp 3 About the Program Although Ensemble Dal Niente performs the type of music that is most commonly called “contemporary classical music” or “new music,” there are many different opinions regarding what this field should be called, and this is partially because there is no real consensus about what it actually is or ought to be. In the US, new music increasingly acknowledges and absorbs the plurality of music-making (and more broadly, art-making and culture-making/consuming) happening in shared, similar, or parallel artistic spaces. It also takes as foundational that the work being done in this vast and hard-to-pin-down field is happening all around the world. This program presents music by an array of composers from the Americas who work in dizzyingly diverse practices, and with backgrounds that are elliptical and ever-changing: Mexicans working in London and Chicago in addition to Mexico City; an Argentinian living in the US; an Afro-Cuban conductor-composer-pianist based in New York for years; a Brazilian- Japanese composer who grew up partially in Queens and partially in Curitiba. We are delighted to present to you this program of Latin American music that, wide-ranging as it may appear, represents only a small slice of the web of creolized music (to invoke composer George Lewis, who has pioneered this concept) that constitutes the art of the world we live in today. • Igor Santos, confined. speak. confined. speak. explores the condition of confinement through various musical interpretations of the word. Sound, for example, is confined through the use of heavy mutes on strings (on both the violin and inside the piano), through short loops (symbolizing confined time), cluster harmonies (confined pitch space), and by playing speech recordings from within a box. The notion of confined expression is equally important and is represented through stuttering gestures, abrupt cut-offs, and other rhetorical devices that disrupt the fluency of music and “speech.” The work is dedicated to Ensemble Dal Niente members MingHuan Xu and Winston Choi, commissioned through the McKim Fund from the Library of Congress. ~ Igor Santos 4 • Tania LeÓn, De Memorias Dedicated to my teacher, Cuban composer Alfredo Diez Nieto, De Memorias has the sensation of days gone by, of my own memories, so familiar that I know them “by memory.” The internal movement of the piece contrasts sounds framed within a rhythmic atmosphere; and opposite them, an atmosphere that is completely free, giving the sensation of a dialogue between capricious imaginary resonances. The work is marked by the use of insistent accents, over which are woven contrasting, lyrical fragments. The use of various methods of tone production contributes to the creation of a special, unified atmosphere. Contrasting elements in the work exist between parallel movements and other materials of an apparently opposing nature. Brief ostinati throughout the piece impart a definite structural cohesiveness as doglissandi , a discrete use of microtones and a few specific dialogues between pairs of instruments. ~ Tania León • Nur Slim, Humming Between Branches Nine miniatures, nine branches, nine songs that seek to unfold their branches aimlessly. Sometimes they group together, prompting the wind to respond; many others go alone wanting to show all their beauty. Its branching extends to form a swing with its swing, each branch begins its evergreen and does not stop blooming throughout the year. They have also shown themselves to be superb, thinking of the nights, where the darkness reveals nothing but a dry and empty wind; in the middle of nowhere with a red light; they fork until they become the petal under your pillow, amid the bustle in the city. Humming Between Branches1 are nine postcards, nine poems, nine silhouettes, which, trapped between shadows and sunsets, never stop singing. ~ Nur Slim • 1 After poetry by Guadalupe Galván and Brian Allen. 5 Luis Amaya, Tinta Roja, Tinta Negra Y bien canta, And sing well, bien habla, speak well, bien conversa, converse well, bien responde, respond well, bien ruega; beg (pray) well; la palabra no es word is not algo que se compre. something that can be bought. Huehuetlahtolli (de “Palabras Huehuetlahtolli (from “Words of de exhortación con que una exhortation with which a mother madre así habla, thus speaks, así instruye a su hija”) thus instructs her daughter.”) Ancient voices—silenced and lost to perpetuity, they attempt to speak to their mestizo offspring which is at once theirs and others’, being and not- being, center and margin, both and neither. When I read the words Tinta Roja, Tinta Negra, I immediately relate them to the rhetorical figure that the ancient Aztecs are thought to have used to refer to their codexes, and therefore, to wisdom. Red Ink, Black Ink, the same words but in another language, resonate in my head as rhetorical figures for loss and profit within a capitalist economic context. Even if these voices succeeded in formulating a word, we would never know exactly what they meant, what those words meant to them, from which dismissed epistemologies they come from, what their real message was. The only thing we can do is resonate with them, beautifully or horribly, and listen. ~ Luis Amaya • TomÁs Gueglio, Lamarque Songs Lamarque Songs is the third piece of a triptych based on Cita en la Frontera, a 1940 Argentine melodrama. It is an expansion of the second piece of said trilogy, Fantasía… for voice and guitar. The program notes for this duo version read: “In 1940, my grandmother on my mother’s side worked as an extra in a film featuring Libertad Lamarque. The name of that film isCita en la Frontera (translatable as ‘Meeting/Date/Encounter at the Border’). It is an early film by Lamarque who later became one of the biggest movie stars of the Spanish-speaking world. Until I recently watched Cita en 6 la Frontera, I wasn’t aware of the extent to which films of this time had shaped both of my grandmothers’ mannerisms, their body language, and their voices (specially their singing voices).” Devoid of the visual element, Lamarque Songs functions then as an oneiric radio soap opera, a nostalgic account of a kind of 40’s glamour, at once shy and loud, at the same time proper and unapologetically melodramatic. ~ Tomás Gueglio • Hilda Paredes, Demente Cuerda Throughout the work the harp and the ensemble establish different kinds of relationships. Sometimes the ensemble magnifies the sonorities of the harp, and sometimes it introduces new ideas, which the harp takes and the other way around.